The organized storage of documents electronically has become of increasing importance to a number of organizations over recent years. Many of these organizations make use of document management systems that are mainly comprised of a computer system used to track and store electronic documents or images of documents in some type of storage medium. For example, a law firm may employ such a system to store any number of documents related to litigation or other matters handled by the law firm.
In the development of such systems, various components of the system must be carefully considered to ensure a robust system for storing electronic documents. For instance, the process used to organize and to index documents stored in the system must be carefully established to ensure that the stored documents can be later retrieved. In addition, the process and tools used for document storage and retrieval must be carefully developed so that retrieval of stored documents is accurate and efficient. Furthermore, the process and mechanisms used to secure the stored documents must be thoroughly installed to prevent unauthorized reading, modifying, and/or destroying of documents.
Thus a need exists for a document management system that better organizes and indexes electronic documents stored within the system. In addition, a need exists for a document management system that includes better security mechanisms that provide more reliable security for the documents stored in the system.